Reflecting on the year of 2023

I have never been a person that reflects on accomplishments throughout the years, but I am finally in a position where I can see the importance of taking some time out of the day to do that.

Most of this is due to personal growth and mentors that I have had over the years. Mentors like Dewald Herman, Mark Wadforth, Sam Stuppos, Dan Tucker and last but not least Gary Cresswell.

My year started off with stepping into the role of Steel Products Superintendent. I took over from Gary and I am thankful to have learned from such a great mentor. The biggest take away was definitely “First seek to understand. Then be understood”. I also enjoyed the “One minute manager meets the Monkey”. Thank you, Gary. First off, the bat was to improve the Service that we provide to the Rolling Mills by setting up a support structure. We have been fine tuning IAuditor for months after it was introduced to us by Shu Shen during the Yellow belt and Green belt training. This has been a big steppingstone in improving the quality of our work and the overall effectiveness and reliability of our equipment. We are now running at 0.4% delays per month. We have added QA’s to the list as well as daily supervisor checks and even our toolbox meetings are now done through IAuditor. It was important to recognise the effort of Darryl Bergin and Carl Willmott and subsequently move them into Process Specialist positions. ?This also meant that it was finally time for Michael Nixon to step up into the Supervisor role.

From a Continuous Improvement perspective, we took what we have learned from the double rollings of Universal sections and applied that to 200PFCs. We also took the opportunity to improve in uptime by modifying the radiuses on the 4 stand rolls for the small angles. This has given us the luxury of more time to meticulously setup rails offline as we now have a 50-hours preparation window compared to the previous 24-hour rush. The part that put a smile on my face was Daryl’s expression after I told him what I wanted to do. “You what now!”.? Good on you Darryl. I must give a special mention to Paul Fitzpatrick. We cannot achieve any of this without the help of Fitzy and his invaluable technical expertise. Thank you, guys.

In May I took on another area of responsibility, Traklok. It is amazing how the wheels turns as I actually did the tooling setups over at Traklok in 2011. It was a very welcome sight to see everyone over there again. Steve Bence, Johhny Belcher and David Birdseye. I also met Glen Davis and Jesse Morse. What a great bunch of people to work with. There is never a problem too big, and the work ethic of these guys are second to none. We are now in the process off offsetting contractor spend by utilizing the Traklok team to execute work previously sent to external vendors.

On a personal front I received a thank you note from Sanjeev Gupta acknowledging my contribution towards continuous improvement a few years ago. I unfortunately did not make it through to the finals of the Liberty GFG Excellence award, but still had this note on my fridge for inspiration. I mean, who gets a thank-you letter from their CEO. I decided to set a goal to try and win this excellence award. Together with the help of Charlton Whitcher, Gary and Darryl we submitted our entry around double rollings. This time around we actually made it to the final stages and the winner announcements were made on the 11th of July. I watched this in angst with my family on the television and to my surprise we won. This is definitely one of the biggest highlights of my career.

July saw the start of another exciting episode as we started to explore additional product capabilities at Traklok. After scanning the macro-environment, Mark Bubicich and Daniel Coghlan uncovered an opportunity in the market to produce solar farm post through the facility. A few quick meetings with Ian Thomas at Dinki Di Engineering, and we were off. First off was the prototyping of a new punch cassette through our trusty 3D printer. This was followed in September by visits to Traklok by Array Technologies to evaluate our production capabilities. The feedback was very encouraging and there is subsequently significant modifications being effected to current equipment. The first trial should happen this week. ?To this end a big shout out to Abdul Azeez Mohammed, Lorenzo Morelli, Fitzy, and Steve.

Another exciting challenge came up during our recent cold shut. A broken burner block in Zone-4 of the Reheat Furnace was found. The OEM could only deliver a replacement burner block in 26 weeks from Italy. Starting up without this burner wan not an option. We managed to reverse engineer and manufacture a new one in-house. The accomplishment involved close collaboration across departments and 94hrs later ‘WE DELIVERED’. What an experience to work with these passionate people. A gigantic thank you Ben Gablonski, Jock MacLauchlan, Ben Oshyer and Colby Dahlin.

This year is far from over and there are so many achievements to celebrate, but let’s keep them for next year. I am looking forward to the new challenges and opportunities that lie ahead.